Bookwyrm – The Story So Far . . .

Author’s note: This is an ongoing novella that I am posting in parts twice-monthly to my newsletter. Readers can subscribe to follow along at the bottom of this page. 

The dragon stared at Thea, blinking, head tilted as if it couldn’t quite believe she was standing there in his lair.

Her surprised gasp caused her diseased lungs to seize. A reminder that she should be dying in bed like a sensible person, not trekking through the mountains like the hero of an old ballad.

As wracking coughs sapped her body of its strength, the weight of her burden drove her to her knees. She hawked and spit bloody phlegm – a sign that the black lung had reached its final stage. She didn’t have long now.

“Have you come to die, tiny human?” The dragon’s words seemed more curious than hostile.

“I’ll be dying soon, regardless. Here it is just as good as anywhere.” She dropped her heavy pack and sat, using it as a backrest. “I went to a lot of trouble hauling these books up the mountain, dragon. If you’re going to burn me out, I’ll take it as a kindness if you don’t destroy them as well.”

  The wyrm’s eyes narrowed. “Is this tribute, then?”

  “Can’t bring tribute to a creature I didn’t know was here.” Thea wiped blood from her lips. “I just needed to get them somewhere safe.”

“Safe from what?”

“You don’t know.” She huffed a disbelieving laugh. “When was the last time you left this cave?“

“Too long, if your kind have forgotten me.” The dragon grumbled as it rested its chin on the cave floor. It stared at her with glittering, unblinking eyes. “Books don’t benefit anyone if they lie forgotten.”

  “Their fame was our downfall.” She stared beyond the dragon into the past. “The Korsridders said that the only things worth knowing were given to them by their god. If it wasn’t in their holy text, it was a blasphemy. They said that the library’s existence was enough to justify their war.” 

She made a face. As if saying their words tasted worse on her tongue than her own sickness.

“When their camp followers brought the Black Lung, they used books to kindle the plague bonfires. It took them nearly two years to burn the library out.”

 “This is all that remains?” It asked, sounding horrified. 

 “The Kors–” She broke into a round of coughing that left her hunched over her knees, spitting blood onto the floor. “They killed the Senior Librarians along with the generals and philosophers. But they said we were too young to be of any importance beyond carrying the books to the bonfires. We smuggled what we could away.” She leaned her head back and took shallow breaths to avoid another coughing fit.

“We thought it best to scatter. Like smoke in the wind. The Korsridders can’t catch all of us. This was all I could carry. Some of the others were stronger. I think they may have fled south by sea with their share,” she said.

“Why choose to bring them into the mountains?” The dragon asked. 

“I had thought that a dry cave would preserve them. Who knows? Someone might find them long after the Korsridders are a memory.” She found that she lacked the energy to shrug. “That’s a comforting thought.”

  The dragon sighed. “Rest, tiny human. I’ll care for your treasure.”

 She let her head drop to her chest. At least she had this comfort, before she died.

# # #

The dragon flicked his tongue out, tasting the air around the human. It smelled of sickness.

But despite her shallow breathing, she still had some vitality within her. Perhaps she was not yet beyond saving. 

Convenient.

He scooped up the satchel in his foreclaws. Then he slithered back to his scroll racks. One of his long-forgotten texts held a treatment for black lung. He just needed to find it.

Perhaps once she was better, she would know where to find more of her books.

 And after that – he clicked his teeth in anticipation. He’d like to introduce himself to the

people who burned books and to show them what he thought of them.

# # #

Thea awoke, which was shocking.  She lay there breathing in the darkness, marveling at the lack of pain. 

A halo of light appeared in the darkness.  Blinking, she turned her face away. 

“Still alive? I suppose not everything in that old treatise was complete bunk.” 

As the light became bearable, she looked at the speaker. An old man stood over her bed, holding a clay lamp aloft to light his way.  In the circle of light she could see that his robes were threadbare and several decades out of date. His skin was the texture and color of parchment, pale with bony, liver spotted hands. 

Her gaze swept the room, taking in the bare stone walls and the drinking gourd laying next to her straw pallet.  Questions flooded her mind.

“Am I —“ she rasped.  Before she could continue, the old man was kneeling beside her, making shushing sounds.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” he said as he helped her to sit up.  He picked up the gourd and held  the spout to her lips like a mother would feed a baby. 

She drank from the vessel.  The liquid had the flavor of bitter herbs and broth.  Now that she was drinking, she realized that she was both parched and hungry.  

“Slow down,” he cautioned.  “Easy. You don’t want to throw it back up.”

He set the gourd aside, then brought the lamp closer to see her better.  

“I’m not dead.” She concluded. If she were in some kind of afterlife, she would either be in less pain, or possibly more. 

“No,” the old man said, tilting her chin higher so he could look into her eyes.  “You survived the disease.  Follow the light, please.” He moved the lamp slowly across her fiend of vision. 

“Was there a dragon, or did I hallucinate that?”

He set the lamp down, looking amused.  “That was no dream.  You came face to face with Inexsuperablis the terrible. And you sassed him.”

She paled at that.  “I did?”

The corners of the old man’s mouth twitched.  “You did.”

“Ah.” She sighed.  The head librarian used to tell her that her smart mouth would lead to a sticky end.  “In my defense, I was dying.” 

“You were.” He eases her back onto the pallet before folding himself into a seated position, crossing his legs before him. He rested his elbows on his knees, placing his thumbs under his chin. “That sass was your salvation. Hang onto it, and you may survive.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that.  

“You may call me Joshua.” He touched his own chest.  “I’m a physician: the previous person that Inexsuperablis chose to spare.”

Her thoughts were still muddled. And now her eyelids felt heavy again. “The drink.”

“Something to help you rest while you regain your strength,” the old man said.  “We’ll speak again when you get your energy back.” 

Though she wanted to stay awake, her eyelids dropped, and the blackness closed in.

# # #

Time lost all meaning after that. Between Thea’s periods of sleep and wakefulness, days or weeks could have passed. The cave was lightless, save for the oil lamp that Joshua brought with him to make her drink this broth or that medicine. 

Eventually, he forced her to rise from her pallet and walk about the cave.   Thea was surprised at how even a short walk left her short of breath.  

“You’ve spent weeks asleep while your body healed,” he explained. “It will take time to rebuild your health. 

As her periods of wakefulness lengthened, he brought her things to read, though her eyes tired in the flickering light of the oil lamp. Eventually, he walked her through smooth-worn tunnels until they emerged into a bright, sun-warmed bowl somewhere on the mountain. 

The hillside above her was covered in verdant green meadows, here and there dotted with fluffy white sheep. Shepherds and shepherdesses, wearing bells that rang in clear tones, moved among the sheep. 

“Servants of the dragon,” he explained. “Centuries ago, he realized that if he raised his own food, he would have no reason to leave the mountains and that the humans on the plains would no longer disturb him with their grievances over devoured livestock. If they forgot that he exists, then the plan seems to have worked.”

Though Thea could see snow not too much higher on the mountain, the air here was pleasant. Joshua helped her to recline on a mossy, chair-shaped rock and arranged a blanket around her. Then, he gave her yet another bound volume to peruse.

“The fresh air will help,” he explained as he settled on another rock with his own book, one she recognized as a book that she’d packed up the mountain with her. 

For once, it seemed like her caretaker wouldn’t be rushing off to do whatever it was he did when he wasn’t forcing her to drink broth. Thea decided that it was time to ask a question that had been weighing on her. 

“Why are you keeping me alive?” 

He raised an eyebrow over the top of his book. “Shouldn’t I be?”

“The dragon didn’t eat me, and you’re nursing me back to health. Why? Are you fattening me up for him to eat later?”

“Hardly,” he chuckled as he bent his head back to his reading. “There are sheep enough here for Inexsuperablis. If he devoured any old human who stumbled into his lair, the other servants might not remain.”

“Then why didn’t he just let the disease take its course and then toss me into a ravine for the birds?”

Joshua put down his book with an air of annoyance. “Firstly, he wouldn’t risk spreading the Black Lung among his servants. Secondly, he isn’t one to waste a resource.”

“I’m a resource?” She asked in bemusement. 

“Yes, and a chatty one,” Joshua grumbled. 

“The books,” she realized. “He said that books do no one any good if they aren’t read.”

“Yes,” he said. “All dragons collect something. This dragon prefers books. You stumbled into his lair with a pack full of them, and the knowledge in your head of how to curate them.”

“I’m to be a librarian for a dragon’s hoard.”

“We prefer the term collection. Hoard is the kind of word that implies sparkly things and brings tiresome men with swords into the lair, burning and pillaging. That’s the sort of misunderstanding that Inexsuperablis prefers to avoid.”

Thea wanted to ask more questions, but Joshua pointedly hid his face in his book. She supposed she could wait.  

With a sigh, she turned back to the book that he had given her: a dry treatise on bookbinding. 

# # #

Time passed and Thea grew progressively stronger. She marked the days by the meals she ate and the occasional trip outside for sunshine and fresh air. The position of the sun helped to refresh her accounting of the time. 

Joshua helped her stave off boredom with a steady supply of scrolls and bound books. 

When she had been in the mountain for a month, by her reckoning, the old man brought a listening horn into the room with her breakfast tray. After she finished eating, he had her turn her back to him so he could press the wide end of the cone-shaped instrument to her back between her shoulder blade and spine. 

She craned her neck so that over her shoulder she could see him press his ear to the narrow end of the horn. 

“Breathe in,” he instructed. “Hold it while you count to five in your head, then breathe out.”

Once she complied, he nodded in satisfaction at what he heard. 

“The rattle is gone.” He explained. “I believe you’ll survive. Congratulations. You were fortunate.”

Thea frowned, thinking of all the people she knew of who hadn’t survived. Who were, in fact, still dying. She didn’t feel fortunate.

“If you do encounter the Black Lung again, you probably won’t contract it.”

“Probably won’t?”

“Occasionally disease tries to outwit me,” he looked amused. Like the Black Lung was some kind of cheeky opponent in a game of Lords and Pawns. “But I shouldn’t worry about that if I were you.”

She supposed that she shouldn’t. At least, not while she was living in the dominion of a dragon. 

“And now?” She asked. 

“Now you go to work.” He placed a clean robe next to her used breakfast tray.  “Finish your ablutions, and then join me in the hallway.”

# # #

The “hallway” was a circular tunnel cut through the rock. She traversed it barefoot though clean, sugar-fine quartz sand that sang to her where she trod. A light breeze flowed around her, carrying with it the faint smell of soil. 

Regular, even scoring marks ran the length of the tunnel. She touched one, finding the edges just as sharp as quarried stone. 

“These are not living caverns,” Joshua’s voice took on a lecturing tone. “Our master, the dragon, carved these halls himself. Rather like a rabbit hollowing out its burrow. You’ll find no flowstone here. Nor will you find stalagmites or stalactites.”

Thea assumed that he was talking about features found in most caverns, but she had no idea what a stalagmite or stalactite was. “That’s not really my area,” she told him. “I was just a handmaiden.”

He frowned at that. “Even a handmaiden to a great library should have a general education. If for no other reason than so that you know what your library contains, and where to find the information quickly, should your patrons need it. 

“Take this library for example: If we hadn’t found the medical treatise on Black Lung quickly, you would have died.”

Thea stopped in her tracks and put her hands on her hips. “What use is it to me, the knowing of stalactites and stalagmites?” She scoffed. “My business was the tending of fires and the reshelving of books and scrolls. Would the knowing of flowstone have helped in those tasks?”

Joshua gave her a patient look that made her feel like she was a girl being scolded by the chief librarian. “One never knows when an odd bit of information could prove useful,” He said. “For example: if one happens to take refuge in a cavern lair of a dragon, one might need to know what a stalagmite is so that if one sees it, one knows to turn around and return to the lair so that one does not become lost.”

Thea ducked her head, chagrined. “I see your point,” she mumbled. 

Joshua patted her on the shoulder. “Take heart, child. There are many things you’ll learn on the way to fulfilling your purpose.”

By ‘fulfilling her purpose” she supposed he meant fulfilling the dragon’s purpose for her. But as she wasn’t to be devoured or to die of Black Lung, it amounted to the same thing. She lifted her chin again and followed Joshua down the hallway. 

The tunnel opened into a balcony overlooking a colossal grotto. Thea gasped, her mind flailing to take in all she saw. She was overlooking an immense library. One that dwarfed the great library she’d devoted her life to. 

Shelves and racks stood in neat, orderly rows on the floor as if they were soldiers in formation. They looked like they were made of stone, as if the floors had been carved away around them, leaving them behind to carry hundreds of books and scrolls. The stone was veined with minerals and crystals that shone like garlands of fairy lights. 

Above them, the walls stepped back in terraces that girdled the cavern in enormous tiers climbing upward to the ceiling. Each terrace contained more shelves of books and scrolls. These were cut into the very walls of the cavern. Large, wide bridges connected these terraces to one another. These were held aloft by stone pillars that had been carved into delicate, lacy shapes. 

Braziers hung suspended under each bridge, providing light to the lower parts of the library, while high above, openings in the cavern allowed sunlight in. Polished bronze mirrors studded the cavern and redirected shafts of light further down. 

Here and there, green vines threaded the stone bridges, drinking in the sunlight and swaying in the breeze. 

“Behold,” Joshua said as he flung his arms wide. “The Hoard of Inexsuperablis the great!”

On festival days, she’d gone to the great amphitheater carved in the face of the temple-mount at the edge of the city. Two-thirds of the city’s population, nearly eighty-thousand by her own calculation, could sit on those marble seats watching the performances. This library dwarfed even that great theatre. 

Movement caught her attention. She squinted, and saw humans moving among the shelves, tending plants, polishing the mirrors, dusting and sweeping. ant-like in both behavior and, at this distance, appearance. 

The scale of the library before he was almost too much to comprehend. She felt her knees wobble beneath her.

Joshua caught her elbow with a steadying hand before she could fall.  

“Easy, there.” He made shushing noises, like one might make to a fussy infant. “Remember to breathe.”

“It’s too much!” She gasped. “Surely you don’t expect me to care for all of it?”

Something about what she said must have struck him as funny. He rocked onto the sand beside her, holding his sides. 

Her spiraling thoughts shut down in the face of his mirth, replaced by anger. “It’s not funny!” 

“It is, though.” Joshua pointed to the tiny figures of the humans working below. “We have caretakers.  That’s not to be your task.”

“Then what am I to do?” She snapped. 

In response, he tapped her on the forehead. “You said that your fellow handmaidens were hiding other books.”

Thea remembered the chaotic burning days, and how she and other others used that chaos to slip what they could out of the carts bound for the bonfires in the temple amphitheater. 

“We did.”

“Your job will be to find them again, and to bring them here, where they will be safe.”

She frowned at that. She and her sister handmaidens had used the confusion to hide the texts. But they hadn’t exactly been methodical or organized themselves. Instead they had grabbed the nearest text and run, like a warren of rabbits slipping past a snare and hoping not all of them would be caught. 

Now the dragon expected her to go out into the captured, plague-ridden city and find them again? The dragon truly was terrible. 

Time would tell whether it proved to be as great as Joshua said. 

“That . . . won’t be easy,” she said. 

“I’m sure it will work out,” Joshua said blithely. “You’re clever enough. And I’ll be helping you.”

Two humans, rather than one. And one of them was an old man who likely hadn’t left a dragon’s cave in decades, if ever. To look for a treasure that wasn’t supposed to be found. 

She forced a smile. “Stupendous.”

 

Ch. 2

 

Thea nervously checked over her equipment for a third time as she waited for Joshua to meet her outside the cave. She had provisions for the desert crossing; walking stick, dry bread, full waterskin, and a beggar’s cloak. She hoped that the robes worn by the lowliest case would allow them to pass practically unseen by the Korsridders.

With her inventory once again complete, she glanced down the mountain goat track leading away from the mountains. 

She marveled that she’d found this entrance to the dragon’s lair at all. The path was well-hidden among the crags and sharp rocks. There were no visible signs here of the domesticated sheep herds that grazed further into the mountain range. She was certain that the dragon had planned it that way. He’d wanted to disappear, and he had done it so successfully that her people hadn’t even left a record of a dragon living in their midst in the historical archives.

Joshua interrupted her musings as he bustled out of the caverns. “Here we are, then!” 

She took in his appearance at a glance, then sighed. He’d overburdened himself with two satchels. One bulged with scrolls. He also seemed to have forgotten his waterskin and had donned an impractical court robe that was moth-eaten and at least a century out of date. 

“You’re not going to get very far wearing that.” She unfastened the cloak from his shoulders and folded it to put away. “Where did you even get it?”

“It was all that we had in the stores,” he said. 

“I’m sure that some of the shepherds on the hillside will have something you could use.”

When she opened the second satchel to store the cloak, she found even more scrolls inside. She looked up at the older archivist incredulously. “The Korsridders are burning texts. Why would you bring them with you into the city?”

“I intended to cache them before we went in. I wanted something to study as we traveled.”

“No,” Thea shook her head. “I think we need that time to teach you how to behave inside the city walls.” She pulled one satchel from his shoulder and put it on the ground with the cloak. “If we draw attention to ourselves at all, the Korsridders will add us to the plague bonfires. Before we go, you should be properly outfitted. That includes water. I will need what I’m carrying, so you should have your own waterskin.”

“It seems that you have something to teach me, after all,” he said ruefully as he picked his belongings back up from the ground. “Come along, little handmaiden. My instruction begins now.”

Thea left her stick, pack and waterskin at the cave entrance and picked her way back through the rocky cavern behind Joshua, speaking to him as she walked. 

“You’ll need proper clothing for travelling the desert,” she said. “Something light during the day to help keep you cool. Linen I think. And a head cover to shield you from the sun. A wool or sheepskin cloak at night. We can’t build a fire, otherwise the Korsridder patrols will find us. “You’ll also want to borrow a stick from one of the shepherds.”

“What do I need a stick for?” 

“Everyone carries a walking stick,” she said with amusement. “You can steady yourself, use it for security, and blend in.”

“This is all very interesting.”

“When we get to the city, don’t make eye contact with anyone. We want people to think that we’re beggars. If we’re not deferential enough, we’ll draw attention to ourselves.”

“I’m not sure I like the sound of this city. Would people really take offense if I looked them in the eyes?”

Thea remembered festival days, when she’d been allowed to leave her duties and attend the games. She and her fellow handmaidens had worn painted silks and adorned themselves with jeweled headpieces, arm cuffs and bracelets from the library’s collection. Everywhere they’d gone, people lowered their heads in deference to her station. 

There weren’t even guards making them bow. It was simply tradition. 

On other occasions when she’d been on errands, she’d worn undyed linen robes so that she could work efficiently without having to stop and acknowledge someone bowing and scraping to her. 

In those instances, the same people who would prostrate themselves on festival days would brush by her without a second glance. No one recognized her because everyone saw the robes and no one saw the girl inhabiting the robes. She was just one of scores of interchangeable handmaidens.

“Before the Korsridders, it would have been so. Now . . . who can say?”

“Regime change. Up is down, down is up.” Joshua nodded sagely. 

“The books won’t still be in the city, I don’t think.” Thea frowned in thought. “The Korsridders were too good at ferritin out our hiding places there. We had decided to run as far as we could as fast as we could in every direction in the hopes that they couldn’t stop all of us.

“With any luck, we’ll find a trail to follow so that we can leave the city quickly. One that the Korsridders somehow missed.”

Joshua smiled at her, and patted her shoulder. “I’m sure it will all work out.”

She didn’t share his dangerous optimism. After all, it’s not as if they could take the dragon with them.

# # #

Thea stared into their meager campfire moodily.  In the sand on the other side of the flames, Joshua was humming a jaunty tune as he arranged his pallet.  As if he were merely preparing for a stroll into a market, rather than an attempt to sneak into an occupied city where drawing the wrong sort of attention could lead to death. 

She eyed the old scholar balefully.  He could be the ruin of them both, unless he learned to blend in.  

But how to tell him?  

If her time as a handmaiden in the great library had taught her anything, it was that old and powerful scholars would dismiss a simple handmaiden, even if her advice was practical.  Would Joshua be the same?

She coughed to draw his attention.  He glanced up, an inquisitive expression on his features.  

“May we speak?”

He settled, cross-legged on his pallet.  “Of course.”

Encouraged, she forged onward.  “When the Korsridders invaded the city, some of the first men put to the sword were scholars like you.  We must blend in, if our mission is to succeed.” 

“Of course,” Joshua nodded as if he’d been thinking about this all along.  “I assumed that it wouldn’t be enough to dress the part of a citizen.  But I don’t really have the time to learn all the mannerisms that would help me blend in. I had an idea how to get around that.”

His words filled Thea with hope.  She was glad that he’d thought through things, rather than blindly throwing them into the jaws of the Korsridders and expecting it all to work out. “Go on.”

“I’ll pretend to be simple.  Keep my head down. Say nothing.  You can play the part of my servant, guiding me through the city.”

She considered that.  A wealthy man with a servant wouldn’t work.  The Korsridders would scrutinize him.  

“Your plan might succeed if we posed as gutter rats,” she said.  “Thanks to the invaders, the city is bursting with them.  Many are refugees, so their customs are already a bit strange.  Two more wouldn’t stand out.  Especially if we’re not observed entering the city.” 

“I take it you know of a secret way in?”

“Not secret, just overlooked.  It’s how we got out of the city last time.” 

She drew a circle in the sand with her finger.  “The city is surrounded by a wall.  The invaders watch all the entrances, as well as the sewers and catacombs, but there are houses outside the walls with cellars. Some of them connect with houses inside the walls. We call it the Silken Road.”

“How do you know about these?” Joshua asked.

“Not every book in the library was sanctioned.” She grinned at him.  “One of my duties was to sneak a tome into the library when we couldn’t acknowledge that we had it.”

“Clever,” Joshua said.  “We may find all we need to know from your smuggler friends, if they still exist.”

“They still exist,” she frowned.  So long as there was a need and someone willing to pay, there would be a King of the Silken Road.  If the invaders had killed Wynna, the current King, then someone else would rise to take his place. 

“We’ll reach the outlying farms in the morning.  I should be able to find Wynna then.  Or his successor, if he’s no longer King.”

“I suppose we should rest, then.” Joshua said cheerfully. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

“You’re taking all of this rather well,” Thea sighed.  “Considering we may die before we see the sunset.” 

“Thea,” he sat next to her and smiled gently.  “I realize that you endured something terrible, and it can’t be easy going back there. But we two minds are more clever than the entire army of Korsridders. We’ve done all we can to minimize our danger.  At this point, could worrying even an ounce right now change our situation?”

“No,” Thea said. 

“Then all that worry is wasteful.  Better to put your energy toward rest so that your mind is nimble when we need it.” 

For all that she wanted to argue, she couldn’t find a strong enough argument to counter his point.  It needled her to admit that he was right.

As he turned his attention back to his pallet, she reflected that at least he’d had the decency not to flaunt his victory.  

Instead, she lay down, turned her back and tried to sleep. 

# # #

They rose before dawn, packing their bags and heading across the scrubland  toward the city, well out of sight of the pilgrim’s road.  Already, great clouds of dust rose from that track.  Thea didn’t need to see it herself  to know that the Korsridders were riding up and down the dusty lane, policing the pilgrims that chose to brave the journey.  

It was better to stay back and not be seen, than to crawl along the track and become a target for their bullying brand of law. 

When Thea could trace the silver outlines of the city’s walls against the sky, she began to look for the goat track that she’d taken to flee the city.  

“What are you looking for?” Joshua asked.

“There is a path somewhere ahead that will take us to the king of the Silken Road. We should be able to arrange for passage into the city from him.”

“What will this passage cost?” Joshua asked. “I have a little hacksilber. It’s from a civilization that died hundreds of years ago. But, silver is silver.”

He was right about that. Before the arrival of the Korsridders, most people in the city judged a coin by its weight in gold, not in the markings on it’s side. 

“The King of the Silken Road trades in information and favors, not gold or silver,” Thea said. 

“Very sensible,” Joshua said. “Favors are harder to steal and one is less likely to get their throat cut over them.”

  “Wynna should be happy to let us into the city.  The question is, what kind of favor would he ask of us in order to let us back out?”

Joshua hummed in response.  The two of them lapsed into silence as they continued across the featureless ground.  The sun crested the horizon, staining the city walls muddy brown. It climbed a candle mark before they found the goat track. 

The walls loomed higher with each passing hour.  But they also drifted to the left as the two of them took a circuitous route around the city.  When the sun was high overhead, they came in sight of a herdsman’s bow-top wagon. 

It was painted a bright green with gold trim.  A canvas cloth had been spread over the arching top.  Whatever beast of burden that pulled it was not present, but the traces stood ready for the beast to be hitched.  

As the two of them approached, the curved round door at the front of the caravan opened, and an old woman stepped out.  She was nearly as wide as she was tall, and dressed in a kaftan of blue stripes.  She crossed her arms and frowned at them in a way that didn’t invite them to stop and visit, 

Thea halted Joshua and held up her hand in a sign for peace. “We’re looking for Wynna, grandmother.  Is he here?”

She glared at the two of them.  Then she pointed at Joshua. 

“How much hacksilber do you have with you?” Thea asked out of the side of her mouth without breaking eye contact with the old woman. 

“Several bracelets,” he whispered back. 

“Give me one of them.” 

There was a jingling sound, and Joshua pressed a lightweight but warm chain in her hand. She held it up for the old woman to see. Then she walked toward the wagon. 

The old woman descended the steps at the front of the wagon and put her hand out. Thea placed the chain in her palm and folded the open hand closed.  She held both of her own hands closed over the old woman’s closed fist. 

“Wynna.” She said. 

The old woman nodded. She pointed to a circle of stones that held the remains of a campfire. Then she turned, and vanished around the side of the wagon. 

“She said to make a fire.  She’ll go get Wynna.”

“Are you sure?” Joshua asked. 

“It was pretty obvious,” Thea said.

“I suppose it was,” Joshua chuckled.  “I packed a flint and tinder, but it looks like she didn’t save us any firewood.” He looked at the surrounding scrubland with a frown.  

“I’ll gather it,” Thea said, thinking of where she might find dead snag that would burn. 

“I’ll see if the old woman has eggs and a frying pan somewhere in that wagon,” Joshua said. 

“She won’t like that,” Thea said.

“She just walked away with quite a nice silver chain.  She can share a few eggs with us.” Joshua said.

“On your head be it!” Thea held up her hands.  Then she went to find firewood. 

###

Once they built a fire, Thea found the old woman’s kettle and put water on to boil. She used her own stores of chicory root to brew a strong, bitter drink.

“If you were a handmaiden in the city, how did you know to contact this smuggler from the outside?” 

Thea sighed. This was the question she’d hoped he wouldn’t have been perceptive enough to ask. “I wasn’t always a handmaiden.”

Joshua picked up a stick and started tracing swirls in the ashes by the fire. Acting as if his scrawling was the most important task in the world. “No?”

 “No.” It helped that he wasn’t looking at her. If she didn’t look at him, she could pretend that she was in her prayer chamber, speaking directly to the gods, who had died in the Korsridder’s fires, anyway. 

“Before I was admitted to the library, I was one of The People of the Silken Road. It’s more than a smuggling operation.” She rubbed her eyes as she thought about how to explain the underworld of the city-that-was to him. 

“There were two rulers in the city. You relied on the scholar-princes and chief priests to fix the roads and your soul. But the King of the Silken Road was really who kept the peace. There wasn’t a purse or a throat cut within the city walls without the King’s say so. 

“My mother was A Lady of the Silken Road – one of the lieutenants. She directed the children who begged on the streets. She taught them to be what people needed to see in order to give them money. If they needed to look blind, she taught them to wear a blindfold and feel about with a cane. If they needed to look malformed, she taught them to pop their limbs out of socket or bend back their legs and tie them up beneath their rags.”

Joshua paused in his doodles for a moment, but didn’t look up.  After a long, silent pause he resumed drawing in the dirt. Thea took that as a sign to continue her explanation. 

“I think my father was a skilled charlatan. At least, that’s where I’ve been told that I got my cleverness from. I’d always been good at guessing what was needed and acting accordingly. That was how I came to be a handmaiden in the Great Library, because I was clever. 

“I mentioned before that there were certain high scholars in the library who needed books that weren’t allowed by the priests. The King of the Silken road is called that because if you need something, The King can get it – for the right price. 

 It was expedient to have a go-between to smuggle the books in. I was placed among the handmaidens at the age when most other girls leave the begging trade and start to learn . . . other professions.”

If Joshua was shocked by her admission, he never revealed it. It was maddening how he had no tells at all. He simply lay down his stick to stare at her.  His gaze was almost reptilian. 

“You never mentioned any of this before.”

It wasn’t an accusation. There was no judgement in his voice. He might as well have been commenting about the weather. 

“I was trained to conceal it,” she said. “There were times – most of the time, if I’m being honest, that I forgot that I was one of The People of the Silken Road. It was simpler to be just another handmaiden.”

“Did the other handmaidens in your library know?”

“Just the few high scholars that I smuggled the books for,” she said. “But I’m sure some of them suspected. Handmaidens are supposed to be simple, but simple doesn’t mean stupid. Once the Korsridders came and the library fell, things changed. I had skills that kept them alive and safeguarded what books we could rescue. If any of them had doubts that I was one of the The Fine People, they figured it out.

“When we decided to run, I used those contacts to get everyone I could out. And then I caught Black Lung and stumbled into a dragon’s cave,” Thea said as she pulled the steaming kettle out of the coals and poured some of the chicory beverage into her travel mug. 

“And without realizing it,  Inexsuperablis the Terrible gave you the one task you were ideally suited for,” Joshua muttered. “I wonder if he realizes that.”

“If we survive this task, I’m sure he’ll come to the realization.” She wished she had some rock-sugar, or at least some milk to take the bitterness out of the drink. Nevertheless, she drank deeply from her cup to have something to do and to hide her face. “When I left the city, Wynna was the King of the Silken Road. If he hasn’t died of Black Lung, then he’ll be along to treat with us directly. If that’s the case, luck will be with us: he’s always looked on me as a favored niece. He was the one who found me the position in the Great Library.”   

Just as she took another sip of the bitter drink, the old woman reappeared around the side of her wagon with Wynna in tow. 

The King of the Silken Road wore patchwork robes made from a hodgepodge of expensive cloth: linen dyed in indigo and crimson and worked in silk threads of purple, gold and silver. Though the fabrics were undoubtedly fine, the overall effect was that of a rag-bag. 

Thea wondered how many lordy graves had been robbed to provide Wynna with his motley vestments. 

“I didn’t believe Delia when she said that you were back,” Wynna grinned, his gold-capped teeth glinting in the sun, as did his shaven-head. “Last I heard, you were stumbling toward the mountains with the Black Lung.” 

Thea considered her response. They needed Wynna to smuggle them into the city, true. And while she liked him as one might like a distant uncle, she didn’t trust him. Especially not with the Korsridders and the Black Lung upending the way of things in the city. 

  Information given out carelessly couldn’t be recalled. And might be used to turn a profit in the wrong ears.

She spread her hands wide, presenting herself as a healthy specimen for his inspection.  “I did go to the mountains.” 

If he chose to believe that his information was only half-correct, it wasn’t her place to correct that misconception.  

“And now you’re back,” he sounded like he couldn’t quite believe that anyone would willingly return.

“Let’s just say that I found a patron while I was out in the world. Someone who would describe himself as a scholar equal to any in the city before the troubles. The implication she lay before him was that her patron could be his patron as well. 

Wynna’s gaze shifted over to Joshua. “A scholar, hey?”

Thea was tempted to step in between Joshua and Wynna, but doing so would tell The King that Joshua was important. Maybe important enough to cut Thea out of the equation and ransom back to her new “patron,” if things grew desperate enough. 

“A scholar with an interest in acquiring anything the Korsridders may have missed.” She snagged Wynna’s attention again, hoping to divert him with the idea of a bigger score.  

Wynna rubbed his chin. “If they pay well enough to convince you to return to this godforsaken slice of earth. Then why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

Thea shrugged as if the thoughts of lofty scholars were far above a simple handmaiden. “They weren’t much in the world before I stumbled upon them. But the idea of all those books that no-one wanted anymore was enough to tempt them out.”

“The old man you travel with would be their agent then, safeguarding their interests against the likes of us?” Wynna turned his shoulder to Joshua in an evident dismissal. Thea wondered how much of it was for show.

“It would,” Joshua said for the first time. “My master is willing to pay for anything we can bring him, regardless of content or quality.”

“Isn’t your master concerned that I’d have a dozen orphans scrawling nonsense on velum to sell him?” Wynna’s eyes narrowed. 

“Waste of expensive velum,” Joshua said. “Especially if the Korsridders are burning the real thing in such a quantity that the handmaidens were able to smuggle tomes out right under their noses.” 

“That was true last month,” The King said. “Now there aren’t any books to be had, much less handmaidens. They’ve all scattered to the four winds with what books were left.”

“But you know where they went,” Thea jumped back into the conversation, still trying to control the flow like one might try to control a runaway wagon. “Or you can find out through your contacts.”

“It will take some time,’ Wynna said. “And it would not be cheap.”

“We expected no less,” She said. “We brought silver with us. Though, as I recall, you prefer to be paid in information rather than jewels or precious metals.

“You have the right of it,” Wynna said. “Are you willing to go back into the city and return with information?”

No. “Yes.” 

Wynna laughed again. “Deila!” He called out to the old woman as he held his arms up and clapped twice. “Fetch me that spitted mutton haunch that I brought along! We can’t close a deal on empty stomachs!” 

Thea quirked her lip. This had come out better than expected.  True, she would have to go into the city. But it was on her terms rather than as Wynna’s tribute to the Korsridders.  

They could worry tomorrow about what sort of bargain they’d made. For tonight, they at least had the promise of a full stomach. 

###

There was no more talk for some time as Wynna spitted the haunch of mutton and set it to roasting. Delia retreated into the wagon, then returned with a parcel wrapped in cheesecloth. She put it on a rock near the fire to warm while she turned the spit. 

The sun traced across the sky as the mutton roasted. When the blazing orb hung low, Wynna unwrapped the parcel, revealing a stack of flatbread. He sliced strips of mutton from the haunch and stacked them in the flatbread. 

Meanwhile, Thea dipped into her stores of chicory to brew a fresh kettle of beverage. 

There was something healing about working communally toward a common goal. Wynna and Thea had once been part of the same community. Then she’d been bartered away to the library.

But the act of creating a meal together helped to build trust between herself and Wynna. Helped them find their footing with one another. Not exactly as family, but at least as business associates. 

The four of them eventually settled by the fire with mugs of Thea’s chicory root drink and the meat-laden flatbread. Wynna ate noisily, smacking and licking his fingers. Joshua stared at him as if he were a creature from a menagerie. For her part, Thea ate quickly, barely tasting the savory meat in her haste to bolt the food. Deila ate in a similar fashion. As if she needed to hurry and have her share before someone could take it from her. 

When they finished, Wynna took up his mug of Chicory brew and swirled it before sipping. He nodded as if mentally checking off a list of things that needed to happen before business.

“Since you left, The Korsridders moved their command center into the Great Library,” he said. “We always thought they didn’t fear the Black Lung. We were wrong. When the prisoners in the cells below the Palace of Justice began dying, they decamped overnight.”

“Why the Great Library?” Thea asked. She could think of several other administrative centers in the city that were better suited to hosting an invading force. The Pantheon was larger.  The priest’s cloisters were suited to serve as barracks for the army. The same with the amphitheater, with the gladiator school behind it.  

“Until the handmaidens fled the city, they were one of the few groups untouched by the Black Lung,” Wynna said. “The Korsridders seem to think their own gods blessed the building because they burned the books.”

Thea felt sick. She placed her mug on the ground and made a face. 

“It would have been the washing,” Joshua said.  

Wynna’s forehead creased in confusion. 

“Anyone touching the books would have washed their hands, yes?”

“Of course,” Thea said. Anyone caught touching the delicate scrolls with dirty hands was required to work for a shift in the furnaces of the hypocaust system beneath the flooring. 

Stoking the fires of the heating system that kept the tiles below their feet warm was hot, dirty work. Anyone required to take a turn at the furnace was careful not to violate the rules again. 

“Diseases like Black Lung spread through miasmas,” Joshua explained. “But when you wash your hands, you wash away the causes of bad air.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Thea said. She hadn’t caught the Black Lung until after she’d fled the city. She suspected it was when she’d hidden herself away in a cart full of rotten, flea-infested straw to avoid a Korsridders patrol. The carter transporting the straw hadn’t looked well. She’d been stricken shortly after.

“Then the Korsridders aren’t any safer in the Great Library than they had been in the Palace of Justice.” Wynna grinned. “We’re fortunate they moved, at any rate. It makes your job easier.” 

“Then you want me to go back into the Great Library,” Thea surmised. 

“Correct,” Wynna said. “I know there are passages all over the library complex that the servants used so they wouldn’t be seen. The Korsridders couldn’t have found them all.”

“What do you want me to find out?” Thea asked.

“Whatever you can,” Wynna said. “Anything useful: the names of the men in charge, patrol movements, any documents of theirs that you can lay hands on.”

Thea pursed her lips. “How long do you want me to be your eyes and ears in the library?” 

“Until I find the information you need.”

“And what if you never find that information? It would be very convenient to have a spy at your command indefinitely.” 

Wynna laughed at that. “Fair enough. I expect I will have information for you within a week. If you return to me with something useful by then. You speak their language, yes?”

The language the Korsridders spoke was similar to their own. Thea had picked up on the differences quickly in the weeks that they had worked to smuggle the books away. 

“I do,” she said.

“Then you can go into town tomorrow,” Wynna said. “Your friend can stay here.”

“I jolly well won’t!” Joshua stood, the liquid in his cup sloshed over the side and across the back of his hand. 

“I won’t keep you against your will, friend.” Wynna said. “But going would be foolish, and you don’t strike me as a fool. Thea can go where she likes if she keeps her head down. No one pays attention to a servant. Particularly a female. But you carry yourself like a scholar-prince. They’ll notice you wherever you go.”

Joshua scowled at him. 

“He’s right,” Thea said, touching his hand. “Let me do this.” 

His eyes tracked back and forth between Thea and Wynna as he calculated the equation they’d laid out. Finally he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “I don’t like it.  But — alright.” 

Thea sighed in relief. “Good.” She nodded to herself. “Good.” 

“But if you aren’t back at the appointed time, my master won’t be happy,” Joshua told her with a meaningful glare. 

Thea swallowed at his unspoken threat.  “Understood.” 

Ch. 3

 

In the hot, claustrophobic confines of the hypocaust beneath the great library, Thea held her breath and counted the footsteps in the room above her. She closed her eyes against the stinging smoke and ash-ladened air, enduring it to gather Wynna’s precious information. 

Sight didn’t matter here. There was nothing to see but ash and row after row of the blackened, short pillars of brick that held the sub-floor up just high enough to circulate hot air and warm the floors above. But lack of sight enhanced what she could hear. 

The Korsridders had made their headquarters above her in the large map room with its massive table. Under the floor, she could monitor their comings and goings while pretending to be the servant in charge of tending the fire that fed the heating system. 

It helped that they all wore tall riding boots with heavy soles and metal spurs that changed size based on their rank. It simplified keeping track of numbers and movements by sound. 

She tilted her head up as she heard a scraping noise. 

That was new.  

Someone up there was rank-proud. Possibly a promotion? Showing off their new spurs by walking in such a way that they struck the ground and made noise with each step. 

Thea could imagine the distinctive gait that would require. Each step would begin with a slide forward rather than a lifting of the feet. 

She made an additional mark in the ash dust before her, and chanced a shallow breath through the damp rag that she’d tied around her head.  

When her lungs felt like they could take no more of the smoke-filled air, she decided that she had better return to her duties. She’d wrung as much information as she could from her time below the floor tiles this day. If she stayed here any longer, someone would note the absence.

Thea was finding the spywork nerve-wracking. Who could she trust? Who would mark her comings and goings? Who would keep a secret in an act of rebellion against their new overlords? Who would tell them in hopes of a lighter hand on the lash?

Better to trust no one and risk nothing. 

She memorized the number of marks in the dust before swiping them away. Then she crawled back through the maze of brick pillars that held the subfloor up. 

Then she eeled her way through a small arched furnace built into the wall. The room she emerged into was still empty, save for the other furnace, in which the blazing fire she’d built earlier had burned down to embers.  She threw another shovelful of dung on the fire in the working furnace. Then she pulled the damp rag from her face and used it to wipe away as much of the ash from her body as she could. 

With that accomplished, she replaced her dirty tunic. 

No sooner had she done that, when another servant entered the room to replace her.

Slave, she corrected herself. Thanks to the Korsridders, we’re now a city of slaves. That’s why they destroyed the library. An uneducated society is a complacent society. 

The man in front of her underscored her thought. He kept his head down and shuffled as he walked.  As if he’d given up all hope in life. He glanced up once, as if to tell her that it was his turn to watch the fires. 

Thea nodded, then dropped her own head to appear as broken as he did. She had to fit in here, if she wanted to survive. 

‘I can do this,’She thought. ‘I back-talked a dragon. I can survive a few more days under the thumb of the Korsridders.’ She trudged to the slave’s bathing chamber and collected a clean tunic from the shelves.  Once she was clean, she retreated to her quarters.  She pushed aside her straw mattress to reveal a broken red wine ewer, and an assortment of tesserae: small colored square tiles from the mosaics that decorated the walls.  She placed six black tiles in the ewer, to represent the six Korsridders that she had counted today.  Then she put a seventh, blue tile in the ewer to represent the new soldier that she’d heard. 

Hugging the ewer close to herself, Thea headed toward the rubbish heap behind the kitchens.  Sometime tonight, one of Wynna’s people would dig the ewer out of the midden pile and take it to him for counting. She’d sent him several ewers over the week that she’d been here.  Each color coded for the location in which she’d counted Korsridder numbers. Green for the training grounds, yellow for barracks, blue for the dining hall, and now red for the headquarters. 

Wynna would have others counting as well. Her numbers would only confirm what he already knew She was doing important work, but that didn’t make her essential.  Better to throw a quiver of arrows at a target than trust in the luck of one. 

Her musings were interrupted when a set of elaborate riding boots stopped within her vision. The spurs, she noted, were mounted with a large set of golden, sharp-toothed wheels that struck the ground with a clang when the wearer strode toward her. She froze, head down, not daring to glance up and be labeled insubordinate.

“Where are you going?” The Korsridder’s thick accent made him sound all the more imperious. 

Thea responded by shaking her ewer so that the tesserae rattled inside. “Rubbish heap, oh mighty one.”

There was a long silence, as if the Korsridder was mentally stripping away her skin to see the lies beneath. Finally he grunted in satisfaction. “Carry on.”  

As he marched away, his gate matched her earlier musing: one slide of the foot into a full extension of a step before setting the foot down.  His spurs gave an ostentatious jangle with each movement. 

She risked a glance up at his retreating back. The rest of his uniform was as bright and over-ornamented as his boots.  She wondered how long it would take for him to settle into his role and become as professional as the rest of the Korsridders. 

‘I hope I’m long gone before that happens.’

###

Thea balanced the broken pottery on one hip as she moved through the market. She kept her head down and trusted that her stained face and ash-laden tunic would help her to blend in with the wretched throng that inhabited the city.

The sounds and smells of the market that day were very different from what she remembered. Once there was the smell of fresh baked bread, the sounds of clucking chickens and geese, and the cries of various merchants hawking their wares. Now It had all been replaced with the smell of rotting meat and fruit as well as the cries of begging children — a good deal more than Wynna’s lot. The sounds were muted. As if the people going about their business were avoiding drawing the notice of their Korsridder oppressors. 

The occasional glimpses she was able to see through her lowered lashes were more than enough to tell her how far her beloved home had fallen. She was reminded of how the walls around her had once girdled the jewel of the fertile coast.

‘Not anymore,’ she thought bitterly. ‘Now it’s nothing but a festering sore.” 

The near-empty stalls in the market made a pitiful showing. This mattered very little. Most of the people in the market were begging rather than buying.

Thea found that she missed the sounds of industry. She missed the smell of baking bread.

The smell of unwashed bodies was oppressive. The Korsridders must have shut down the bath houses.

The few tradesmen, who were able to buy or barter for what meagre goods could be had, stole furtively from stall to stall like thieves. As if afraid of both the Korsridders, and also that their neighbors might see that they had food when others did not. Even if that food was stale bread and bruised produce.

No wonder the Korsridders had so many slaves. They were the only ones not starving.

Thea suspected that a good many freeborn citizens had sold themselves into slavery to the Korsridders just to avoid starvation.

She placed the pottery on a midden cart bound for the heaps beyond the walls, where one of Wynna’s ragpickers would retrieve it and send it his way.

Thea turned back toward the once great library — and stopped short as she glimpsed an uncovered head of intricately-styled  hair. She recognized the distinctive hairstyle reserved for a handmaiden of the library.

The sight brought a frown to her face. Only another handmaiden would know how to style their hair in that distinctive way. And only another handmaiden would recognize it for what it was, since they were not supposed to leave their quarters with their heads uncovered.

She touched her own shorn head. Her hair had fallen out, thanks to the black lung. Lack of nourishment was the real culprit, Joshua had told her.

The stubble was only now visible beneath her headscarf and cap. In her sickly state, her resemblance to a boy gave her more freedom of movement around the city, as well as access to information-gathering tasks right under the Korsridder’s noses.

‘There shouldn’t be any handmaidens left in the city,’ she thought. ‘The plan was to flee with as many books as we could carry. But if one of the others were caught . . .” Thea worried her lip as she considered this.

If one of the others were caught, the Korsridders might use them as bait in a trap for any remnant of the library’s educated servants. In which case, their uncovered head and exposed hair would make an effective lure.

If that were the case, though, Thea might not be caught. They would expect another handmaiden, not a skinny boy with too-big eyes and protruding ribs. If the Korsridders had a handmaiden captured, Thea could possibly gather information and plan a rescue.

Wynna would help them, if for no other reason than that a remaining handmaiden would have information he wanted. But more importantly, Joshua could secure help from the dragon.

Thea’s heart sped up in her chest as she considered this. If she could point the way to books within the city, she felt sure that the dragon would aide her against a thousand Korsridders.

Perhaps she could rid them all of the pestilent rats.

With the stirrings of a new plan, she slipped into the press of bodies moving about the market stalls. She needed to keep the handmaiden in her sight.

The woman with the handmaiden’s hair left the market and followed narrow and twisting cobblestone side-streets, the doors of servants’ entrances creating the only recesses at street level in the graffiti-covered, stuccoed walls. Had Thea extended her arms to their limits, her fingertips would just brush the wall on either side of the street.

Higher up, small windows, barred with wooden trellis, looked out on the streets. Garments hung from one or two open windows, and here and there an industrious tenant had strung a rope across the alley to hang more garments for drying.

Thea ducked in and out of doorways to hide, but the handmaiden took no notice of her skulking.

The girl stopped at one door, and let herself inside. Thea darted from her hiding place, and barely caught the ring before the door could fully close. She inched the heavy wood open again, pressing her eye into the gap between the post and the door.

Inside, a long hallway stretched away with the portals to rooms on either side. The handmaiden was at the far end, turning a corner.

Thea leaned against the door’s frame and considered this. Either the handmaiden had been so caught up in her tasks that she hadn’t known she was being followed, or she was trying to lead Thea into a trap.

If she went in, other servants would know that she was not one of them. She could claim to have a message to deliver. But that would end with her sitting before the master of this domicile, with no message to give.

She spotted a paving stone left sitting just inside. No doubt left there to prop open the door when there were deliveries. She wedged it into the space between the door and the post to hold it open, just a crack. Then she darted back up the alley, looking for some pretext to let her wander the domicile unremarked upon.

Back in the market, she looked over the wares that the merchants were selling. Combs? She would end up in front of the lady of the domicile if she pretended to be delivering goods such as those.

Livestock such as chickens would draw too much attention to her. Figs would be too heavy to manage.

Her eyes fell on a basket of bread. That would do!

She wove through the crowd until she reached the stall. Then, pressing one of Wynna’s tokens into the bread seller’s hand, she pointed to a basket of bread.

The seller’s eyes widened at the sight of the clay tile, stamped with Wynna’s emblem. He handed over the basket and waved her away as if she couldn’t leave his stall fast enough.

Thea returned to the door, to find the doorstop still holding it open. She hitched the basket of bread higher, so that it obscured her face and then stepped into the building.

The inside was quiet and cool. Marble tile floors and thick stucco walls muffled the sounds from the streets. As Thea walked down the hall, she could hear the trickle of a fountain somewhere down the hall.

She could see stairs to her left, and a door to her right. However, she chose to follow the hallway in pursuit of the handmaiden. The passage opened up on a courtyard garden, of sorts. There was a reflecting pool in the center, around which were shrubbery laid out in geometric patterns with softer flowers inside each shape.

A covered walkway framed the garden. Sliding doors leading the way to other rooms were set into the walk at regular intervals.

Of the handmaiden, there was no sign. Thea cursed her luck. The girl could have gone anywhere.

There was no helping it, she would have to leave before she was discovered. Perhaps she could watch the domicile and catch the girl if she left again.

“You there!” An unfamiliar feminine voice called to her.

Thea froze.

“You’re not one of my servants. Who are you?”

“Delivery,” she croaked out as she lifted the basket higher. Peeking out between the loaves, she could see a stately matron with hair piled atop her head and held in place with golden ribbons. She wore a carved cameo around her neck on a delicate golden chain. A signet on her right hand bore a pomegranate, which indicated that the lady’s name was Persephone.

Her clothing had been decorated with a red border, denoting her as a lady of delicate business.

Thea sighed in relief, allowing the basket to sag in her arms. If this was a Madam, then she would be affiliated with Wynna.

Madam Persephone looked skeptical. “I didn’t order anything from the market,” she said.

“I have my orders here.” Thea produced another of Wynna’s stamped clay tokens, and pressed it into the madam’s cool hands.

A look of understanding dawned on the madame’s face. She smoothed her countinance into a neutral expression that made her resemble a marble statue more than a living woman. “How may I be of service?”

Thea was tempted to hold onto the basket as a shield between herself and this cold, hard statue of a lady. But she was quickly growing tired of the cumbersome accessory.

She put the basket on a bench that resembled an upturned vase, then turned to face the madam.

“I need to speak with the library handmaiden, Great Lady.” She dipped her head in a formal bow. In the days before the Korsridders, showing such courtesy to a courtesan would be unthinkable. In the days when she was simply one of Wynna’s girls, it would have been expected.

Here Thea figured that she would get further by being deferential than she would in treating the mistress of this house as lesser.

A look of confusion flitted over Madam Persephone’s face. “There is no such person here. All the handmaidens fled the city.”

“One of your girls was in the market without her head covered,” Thea stated. “Her hair was styled in the style of the library’s handmaidens.”

“All of my girls go bare-headed,” Madame Persephone said. “It is how they show that they are my girls.”

Thea argued. “That style is one that only the handmaidens would know.”

Madam Persephone blinked, her eyes cast far away as she considered this. “You may ask the girl where she acquired that hairstyle,” she said in measured tones. A dark frown creased her features. “For I would also like to know where she was given such a hairstyle. And by what right she thinks that she could wear it with impunity.”

Thea reached for the basket, but the madam waved her off.

“Leave it. I’ll have it sent to the kitchens.”

She led Thea around the courtyard’s edge to a red-painted sliding door. Another hallway filled with closed sliding doors led away.

The sounds that were emanating from behind these doors led Thea to conclude that business was being conducted here. Madam Persephone strode up to one of these doors and knocked.

The door slid partially open, and the girl from the market put her head out. Her hairstyle was considerably messier, and her clothing hung at odd angles.

Thea looked away.

“Gulia, this . . . person has questions for you.” Here she glanced sideways at Thea. “You are to answer them truthfully.”

The girl nodded. She straightened her robe and slipped fully into the hallway, closing the door behind her with a sharp rap. She dipped a curtsy to Thea, her eyes fixed on the girl’s anxious face.

“Your hair. Who fixed it?”

Gulia glanced up through lowered lashes. She shrugged.

“Answer the question, girl!” Madame Persephone grasped Gulia’s shoulder and shook her. The older woman’s fingers dug into the cloth at the girl’s shoulder. Thea had no doubt that the poor girl would be bruised there.

“Calpurna Ahenobarberous has a new hairdresser,” Gulia gasped out. “She styled my hair before I served at his dinner party last night.”

Thea realized that she must have spied Gulia while she was returning to her mistress’s domicile.

“Take your hair down immediately!” Madame Persephone looked outraged. “You must never wear that style out in the city again.”

Gulia bobbed her head even as she jerked the pins from her hair.

There were no hairdressers among the servants of the library. All of the handmaidens fixed one another’s hair, so as to keep the mysteries of their profession. For a slave to know the style, they must have once been a sister handmaiden.

“I must speak with this hairdresser, Thea said.

Madame Persephone smoothed out her robes as she eyed Thea’s appearance with a disdainful sniff. “I can send you there on an errand as my servant. But first, you must have a bath and a change of clothing. No one would believe that you are one of my serving boys.”

“About that,” Thea grimaced. “I’m not exactly a . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to explain her disguise.

“You’re a girl in disguise.” The madame folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. “When you recognized the handmaiden’s hairstyle, I assumed that you were one of them. I had heard they all fled the city. It appears that I was wrong by at least two counts.”

“I thought as much myself,” Thea said. “I’m here trying to find my sisters.” And the books that they took away, but that was not for this courtesan to know.

With a decisive nod, Madame Persephone gestured for Thea to follow her down the hallway. The plaster walls and doors with their furtive noises gave way to a cool, marble tiled room.

Here where each footstep echoed, Thea automatically felt the need to move quietly. Even breathing seemed as if it would shatter the tranquility of the space.

One wall was honeycombed with recessed cubicles. Each cubicle was filled with linen towels, as well as soaps and oils for bathing. The facing wall held a row of benches, as well as a line of hooks. From each of the hooks hung a fine linen robe with a red border on the hem.

“Leave your soiled robes here,” Madame Persephone made a face at the clothing. “I‘ll have them burned. I presume you won’t be missed wherever you were previously.”

Thea shook her head. The head slaver under the Korsridders was one of Wynna’s people. He had accounted for her coming into the library as a new face, and he would account for her leaving as well if she did not go back.

“You shall wear one of the robes with the green border.” Madame Persephone pursed her lips. “It will mark you as one of my personal servants, not one of my girls.”

Thea nodded with some relief at that. If she wore one of the robes that proclaimed her a girl of negotiable affection, then she might have trouble explaining why she wasn’t negotiating affection with anyone should she be stopped on the streets — or worse! In the Ahenobarberous domicile!

Thea did as instructed and moved quickly into the warm bathing chamber. Unlike the bathhouses, the room was small. Which Thea assumed made it easier to heat from below. A marble tiled pool dominated the space. The surrounding walls on all sides were barely set back, allowing for a small walking path around the water basin.

Madame Persephone followed Thea, carrying a towel for her to dry with.

“I don’t look to be served by the lady of the house!” Thea protested, blushing down to the roots of her hair.

In response, Madame Persephone rolled her eyes. “I’m not doing this for your benefit, you stupid girl. I owe a great deal to Wynna. He would not be pleased if I let you blunder into the Ahenobarberous domicile without preparing you first.

“Oh,” Thea sank into the water up to her chin. She felt less exposed that way.

“The Ahenobarberous domicile was one of the handful of estates near the trademen’s quarter that hasn’t been commandeered by the Korsridders,” Madame Persephone said. “I suspect that is because they import grain, and even the Korsridders have to eat.”

“Why haven’t the Korsridders taken over the grain warehouses?” Thea asked.

“They still need Duke Ahenobarberous’s contacts. Right now they are taking all the food. But if Duke Ahenobarberous stops importing grain, the soldiers will soon be starving with the rest of the citizens.

“So they must leave him be, as much as they would like to seize his domicile. But Duke Ahenobarberous must also endure their presence as his guests. And you’ll have to be careful in your movements, as well.”

Thea’s first instinct was to point out that she had been spying on the Korsridders under their very noses and had yet to be caught. But decided against it. The Madame was being generous due to her connections to Wynna. If Thea was less than gracious, it would reflect badly on him.

He was one of two patrons she had. And of the two, he was the less scaly one.

She finished bathing and reached for the towel before emerging from the bath. “Thank you for your help. I won’t take anymore of your time or resources,” she said.

“Best of luck to you,” Madame Persephone said as she rose from the bench. She swept from the room, not looking back to see if Thea needed any more help. Thea was glad to have a bit of privacy to dress in the serving boy’s robes the Madame had provided.

###

There seemed to be more birds than Thea remembered in the city. Tiny starlings that formed swooping, swirling clouds. Fat pigeons that perched on the smashed statues and left droppings among the rubble of marble headdresses as well as noisy seagulls that flew in from the bay and tried to steal what little bread there was in the market.

Thea found it strange. Shouldn’t there be fewer birds? The exotic flamingoes and peacocks had vanished from the stalls. And the tiny birds and other pets kept in cages were no longer sitting in windows. No doubt all eaten as the bread rations dried up.

But shouldn’t the wild birds have vanished into pies and soups to feed starving citizens along with their tame brethren by now?

The only reason Thea could account for was that the Korsridders had outlawed traps and slings along with any other weaponry. With no ability to hunt the wild birds, remaining predators among the city, the bird population might already be swelling.

She puzzled out the mystery as she kept to the side streets, as any good servant should do. The promenades had been for scholars and their wives, as well as the temple handmaidens and acolytes. Now they were only for the Korsridders.

Duke Ahenobarberous’s domicile was located on Noble’s Hill, overlooking the bay and close to his grain warehouses that abutted the seaside wall and the docks beyond.

From there, the duke could walk to his warehouses each day. Though from what Thea remembered, he seldom left his domicile. When he did, it was usually in a litter borne by four strong servants.

He claimed it was to avoid the many sea birds circling overhead, and the unfortunate aim of their droppings. But rumor was that the duke had grown too fat to walk very far. Thea suspected that the rumors were not very much exaggerated.

She once again bypassed the ornate front doors and followed the alley to the servant’s entrance at the side of the domicile complex. Like Madam Persephone’s domicile, this home sprawled in a way that only the truly wealthy could afford in a city such as this. Thea suspected that unlike Madam Persephone’s, this domicile did not include dozens of tiny rooms for discrete business.

She knocked at the servant’s entrance, and was greeted by a severe-looking matron. The woman took one look at the green border of Thea’s robes that identified her as a lowly house servant of a Madam, and sniffed in distaste.

Thea took a step back, swallowing convulsively under the older woman’s glare. Then she stiffened her spine. She was the child of a queen of thieves, and a handmaiden of the great library in her own right. She would not be cowed by the likes of this old prune!

With her head held high, she held out Madam Persephone’s token.

“I’m to speak with the person who did our Gulia’s hair for the party last night,” Thea said.

“Why?” The woman asked.

“That’s my mistress’s business.” It was Thea’s turn to look haughty.

“We have no such person here.”

“Gulia was walking about the market in a hairstyle that only the Library Handmaidens were permitted to wear.”

“Permitted by the high-and-mighty scholars,” The woman sneered. “Where are they now to forbid anything? They’re gone! That’s where. And we’re still here.”

Thea wanted to slap the sneer off of the old hag’s face. How dare she! But doing so wouldn’t get her to her goal. Instead, she pulled out Wynna’s token.

“The scholars may be gone, but the King of the Silken Road is still here. And he would take an interest if he hears that you stood in my way. Now, you can take me to the hairdresser, or I can ask at the front door.”

The matron’s sneer melted from her face. Though she continued to frown. Without even a gesture to indicate that Thea should follow, she turned and glided away from the door.

With a snort of satisfaction, Thea entered the domicile.

Thea was led in a weaving path through a busy kitchen. Three different cooks stood around a chopping board mincing vegetables and meat while another shaped a flatbread. A pot filled with what smelled like a bubbling stew was suspended on a tripod over a blazing hearth. Various implements, such as tongs, skewers and ladles hung from the walls.

She followed the older woman past shelves of dry food, oils and sauces stored in terracotta pottery. Rather than go out into the rest of the domicile, the matron led Thea down a set of stairs into a cellar of some kind. She felt a chill as she passed one door, which must lead to a cold room. Through another she could see giant wooden barrels of wine and oil, stored on their sides.

The matron led Thea into this room. Though Thea looked about, she saw no one.

Before she could question this, her guide tapped on one barrel. It made a hollow sound. Then the lid swung open, revealing a brick-lined passage behind it. The matron rolled her wrist to indicate that Thea should enter the passageway.

“You keep your hairdresser in a wine barrel?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, boy. We hide certain servants where the Korsridders can’t find them.” The older woman spat on the ground. “If your mistress sent you to speak with the hairdresser, then she sent you to find someone who does not want to be found. Either you go to them, or you go back and tell your mistress that no such person is here.”

She had to bend double to fit. As she squatted before the passage, the matron lit a candle to illuminate the darkness and gave it to Thea to carry.

As soon as Thea had stuffed herself into the passageway, the matron closed the barrel-door on her with a snick.

Thea twisted in the passageway until she could see the hidden door through which she’d come. There was no going back now. She turned around again and peered down the passageway.

It must have seen frequent use, because it was clean of both dirt and cobwebs.

‘This is no worse than crawling around beneath the floor of the Korsridder’s headquarters,” she consoled herself.

As Thea crawled down the passageway, she wished she had a knife or some other means of protection. Even when she’d been a handmaiden, she’d never really lost the habit of keeping a small knife hidden in the folds of her robes. But slaves of the Korsridders wouldn’t have been permitted to carry such things. And if she’d been searched, it would have revealed her deception.

If she made it out of the city alive with Wynna’s information, she swore that she would never go unarmed again.

The passageway sloped downward on a narrow angle. Before long, Thea heard bubbling and gurgling. She suspected that she must be near the underground drainage system that carried rainwater out of the city and into the bay.

Before long, she came against another round, barrel-shaped door. She pushed against the wood, but the door seemed to be firmly shut.

Thea frowned at that. Surely she wouldn’t have been sent down here only to die trapped in an underground tunnel! In desperation, she rapped her knuckles against it in the same pattern that the matron had used earlier. This time, the door swung outward.

With a sigh of relief, she crawled through the opening. When she could stand again, she found herself surrounded by sacks and sacks of what was clearly marked as grain.

‘This must be one of Duke Ahenobarberous’s granaries,’ she realized. ‘The secret passageway would allow for travel between the domicile and the warehouse without being seen. Then this mysterious hairdresser must be somewhere in this warehouse.’

Thea raised her candle and began moving from room to room, looking for someone who might be hiding out among the stored bags of grain.

“Hello?” She called out softly. “Is anyone here?”

There was no answer but the rustle of birds nesting in the rafters. She wandered along the aisles between stacked bags of grain, looking for any sign of workers or other people.

Eventually, she came to an aisle with footprints in the dusty floor. This seemed more promising. She turned to follow these footprints.

They threaded their way among the aisles and eventually left the rooms of grain for a room with shelves of amphorae. This room smelled like baked earth, with an undertone of herbs and oil. Here the dust was lessened. Thea was left to follow the trail based on the dust tracked in from the other rooms, rather than footprints left in dust.

As she crossed the room, a hand shot out to grasp her arm and bar her way.

“You’re not one of the Duke’s servants.” The speaker’s raspy voice made it impossible to determine if they were male or female.

Thea turned to see who spoke. The hand on her arm was connected to a person shrouded and veiled in shapeless, stained robes.

Once again she produced Wynna’s token. It had opened doors for her all day. This time though, the mystery person passed it back to her.

“That has no meaning to me,” they intoned.

“It’s the badge of the King of the Silken Road.” Thea stamped her foot.

“There is no Silken Road here.”

“You’re very much mistaken about that.” She crossed her arms. “Otherwise, I would not be here.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a hairdresser.“

“In a warehouse?”

“This hairdresser knows the style used by the Handmaidens of the Library.” Thea said. “They worked that style at the Duke’s party last night. I saw it on the head of a courtesan in the marketplace today.”

The being in the veils tilted their head to the side.

“So you did,” they said at last. They beckoned as they turned and walked away.

“This is growing tiresome,” Thea said to herself as she followed them around another set of shelves.

Once again, Thea was led down a set of stairs into a basement. As they descended, the guide took an oil lamp down from a nearby shelf.

She walked to a nearby shelf and shifted an amphorae to the side, revealing another small tunnel behind it.

“I do hope this is the last tunnel that I must crawl through,” Thea said as she once again crawled into the space, her candle held high in front of her.

The tunnel was shorter this time. By Thea’s estimate, they were still beneath the warehouse when she emerged on the other side.

The smell hit her first, pungent with the stink of unwashed bodies in cramped spaces. Followed by heat and humidity so thick, she felt like she could drink the very air.

She emerged from the tunnel and held the candle higher to get a better look at the situation, and found herself in what had once been a smuggler’s entrance on the seawall side of the warehouse.

A pair of dirty, but well-fed humans in patchwork clothing huddled together in the corner of the cramped, stone room. Thea glanced at them long enough to determine that they didn’t have weapons. Then she turned her attention to the rest of the room.

Overturned boats were stacked against walls that someone had hewn out of rock to create a kind of cave. The floor had been covered in sand, but it had little give. Thea suspected that the sub-floor was also stone.

A boarded up door filled the mouth of the cave across from her tunnel entrance, creating a barricade to keep them in. Or perhaps to keep someone else out. Beyond that door, Thea could hear the lap of waves and the cry of sea birds.

‘This must be a smuggler’s entrance for the Duke’s warehouse.’

In the moment it took to register all this, the two people in the room studied her as well.

“Thea?” One of them asked incredulously.

Thea blinked in surprise. She knew that voice from the library.

“Askanda?”

Her fellow handmaiden threw her arms around Thea with a cry.

Thea stood there, arms at her sides as the other girl hugged her. She looked at the other person in the room, and realized that it was Paullus, one of the library acolytes and one of the others who was supposed to have taken away a share of the books. He looked away, as if he couldn’t bear Thea’s regard.

“What are you doing here?” The words erupted from her as if Askanda had squeezed them out with her embrace.

Askanda pulled away, her gaze fixed on the ground. “I . . .”

“You were supposed to leave the city!” Thea put her hands on her hips and glared at the other girl. “Where are your share of the books?”

“Well . . .” Askanda rubbed the back of her neck.

“Tell me you didn’t destroy them!” The thought made Thea sick. “Askanda!”

“No!” Askanda held up both of her hands, palms out. “No! They’re safe!”

“Safe? Safe where?”

“Here!” Paullus said.

Thea whirled, to see that Paullus pointed to the stack of boats. “We buried them in the sand and stacked the boats on top of them.”

“Am I the only one who actually followed the plan!” Thea flung her hands up in frustration. “Did any of the others leave the city?”

“We don’t know,” Paullus said. “We haven’t heard rumors of anyone else. But we have been looking.”

That must be why the courtesan was wearing the handmaiden’s hairstyle, Thea realized. “You took a very great risk, putting that hairstyle out where people could see it. What if one of the library servants was now working with the Korsridders? You could have been captured.”

Paullus nodded in agreement. “We accepted those risks.”

“How did you find this place?” Thea asked.

“The Duke’s steward was a devotee of the Mysteries of the Scholars. When we all decided to run, Askanda and I went to him for help leaving the city. He brought us here, and agreed to hide us as long as we needed to hide.”

“We planned to avoid the patrols by using the boats.” Askanda folded her arms and stuck out her lower lip. “We thought that if we followed the coast, and if there was no moon to see by. But then the time never seemed right.”

“You would rather stay here and starve,” Thea concluded. “No, not starve, because you were posing as servants in the Duke’s household long enough to eat.” That’s why neither of them looked starved.

“We’re not like you!” Askanda snapped at her.

Paullus stepped between Askanda and Thea. “We’re not brave, or clever, or Thea,” he said. “We never learned how to survive outside the library. The scholars didn’t prepare us for this.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be my life!” Askanda buried her face in her hands and wept.

Looking at Askanda’s wretched form, Thea’s contempt melted away. Replaced entirely with pity.

“I almost didn’t survive,” she said gently. “I was so sick I almost died. But I did my duty anyway.”

Before any of the others could respond, someone pounded on the door in the wall so hard that the planks bowed inward. Thea heard the guttural language of the Korsridders on the other side of the door.

Fear welled up in Thea, but she smothered it before it could paralyze her. It wouldn’t serve now anymore than it would have served her when she was dying of black lung. If she could survive long enough for Wynna and Joshua to realize that something was wrong, they would find her.

She pictured a strong sea chest. Then she pictured herself, folding up her emotions like they were an old blanket and placing them in the chest and closing the lid. She would be nothing more than an automaton, fulfilling her duty as best she could, until it was safe to feel again.

Paullus clamped his hand over Askanda’s mouth to keep her from crying out. He dragged her over to the tunnel entrance and motioned her to flee.

“It’s no use,” Thea whispered. “They’ll have the warehouse surrounded.”

“They followed you.” His mouth was set in a hard line.

“Don’t be stupid,” Thea said. “No doubt, they’ve been searching the coastline for secret ways into the city.” She gave them both a pitying look. “It was only a matter of time before they found this hiding place.”

“What do we do?” Askanda grabbed her shoulder and shook it.

“We comply.” Thea set her mouth in a grim line. “We submit. If they beat us, we take the beating without crying, if we can. We act as if we are already broken. Because the Korsridders will try to break us, if they think they can. They’ll enjoy it.”

Paullus shut his eyes and dropped his head. “Hopefully that will be enough to keep us alive.”

“Alive?” Askanda whispered. Her face twisted in a horrified expression. “What kind of life is that?”

Thea couldn’t give them false hope, not even that there was a chance that Wynna and Joshua would try to rescue them. After all, the dragon had only been interested in her because she’d had a stack of books and had shown him no fear.

“What if we give them the books?” Askanda looked to their hiding place below the boats.

Thea couldn’t permit that. “They’ll kill us if they think we’re scholars,” she blurted out. “We’re better off pretending to be citizens trying to avoid slavery.”

Thea watched the hope die in Askanda’s eyes. It felt cruel, but it was better that the other girl lose her illusions now, than to have the Korsridders violently rip them away. The girl buried her face in Paullus’s shoulder and wept.

The pounding continued incessantly. With each strike, wood splintered away from the barrier. Thea moved to the center of the cave and knelt in the sand to wait with her hands in front of her to show that she was not armed. If she didn’t resist, the Korsridders would be less likely to beat her.

Then, as suddenly as the pounding started, it was cut off. Thea heard cries of fear, and a deafening roar. Then she heard a different kind of roar, like the blast of a furnace.

Hope managed to work its way out of the prison she’d made. It kindled its own fire in her breast. She let the feeling grow.

#  #  #

By the time the roars subsided, any sounds at all from that side of the sea wall entrance had also subsided. As had any attempts to get through the barricade.

Thea touched the weathered door, and found that it swung outward with no effort.

“Don’t!” Askanda cried out as she stretched out a hand to stop Thea.

Thea shook her hand off and gave her a quelling look. Then she put her eye to the open crack in the door. A thick layer of glass sparkled like a glaze across the sandy beach.

Charred bits of armor that she recognized as the style worn by the Korsridders lay half-melted and fused to the glass in untidy heaps.

The star-pointed rowel of a Korsridder spur stuck out of the glass in one spot. Thea hoped it belonged to the pompous officer she’d seen earlier this morning, though she doubted she had that much good fortune.

Further down the bay, the dragon rested on the sand, gazing at the door she stood behind with a mild expression.

She pulled the door closed again, and turned back to Paullus and Askanda. “Stay here until I tell you it’s safe to come out.”

When she opened the door again, the dragon was gone, and Joshua was picking his way through the glass dunes toward her.

Thea frowned, as suddenly she saw the past few weeks of her recovery in a new light.

She exited the smuggler’s cave and shut the door behind her. On this side, the wood was charred, but still solid. The glass beneath her shoes was solid, though smooth and a bit slippery. She moved with care to meet Joshua.

“Where did the dragon go?” She asked him, though she suspected that she already knew the answer. What she really wanted was to see if Joshua would treat her as simple-minded.

He pointed to the air above them. “Inexsuperablis just flew away.”

“Did he?” Thea put her hands on her hips. “How did he know where to find me?” She remembered the flocks of starlings that twisted into swirling black shapes as they flew through the air. There had seemed like an unusually large number of them flying over the city. Could that have been him?

Johnathan looked at her with knowing eyes. “You’re very clever.”

“I’ve never had a choice but to be clever,” she said.

“And fearless.”

“My fears are always with me,” she folded her arms across her chest and looked away down the glass-covered beach. “I don’t have the luxury of indulging them. If I did, I would be dead.”

Even as she said the words, she knew she was lying. She was having trouble keeping her emotions in their imaginary box. They seemed to be leaking out from under the lid. Primarily the anger. And it felt like it was burning her out from the inside.

‘Why not lie?’ She thought to herself. ‘Everyone else lies. Askanda and Paullus lied when they said they would carry away the books. Joshua, or Inexsuperablis, or whatever he called himself, lied about who or what he is. What was one more lie sent out into the world?’

Rather than challenge her on her emotional state, he chose a new subject. “Did you find any books?”

Because of course that’s what he wanted to know about.

She tried not to feel bitter. If not for the fact that some scholar or another found value in books, she would never have been chosen to serve as a handmaiden. Nor would she have been cured of the black lung. But just once, she wished someone would value her for herself.

Maybe she needed to be the one who valued herself. She could start by prioritizing her own goals.

Thea pointed back to the cave with her chin. “There are some tomes hidden in there. And a couple library servants you can take back with you.”

“Me?” Joshua raised his eyebrows. “Not us?”

“I’m going to stay here and keep spying for Wynna.” From now on, the master she served would be herself.

Joshua squinted at her. His mouth pulled to one side. “You’re set on this path? After everything?”

“I am grateful for all you’ve done,” Thea said. “But this is my home. I can’t go live in your library and be happy knowing that my people are here starving, dying of black lung and being enslaved.”

With a chuckle, he turned his face to the sky and shook his head.

“Alright.” He sighed. “Go get the books, and your friends, and wait for me in that cave. I’ll deal with your invaders.”

He shut his eyes. When he opened them, they glowed like coals in a dying fire. “I’ve been meaning to let those book-burners know what I think of them, at any rate.

“This will be messy.” The register of his voice dropped in a way that raised all the hairs on the back of Thea’s neck. “And tedious.”

He raised an eyebrow as he smirked at her. “You’re really not afraid?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Thea took a step back. “When I forget that I’m angry, I remember to be terrified.”

“Hang on to that anger then,” Joshua said with an approving nod. “I find it useful.”

He grasped her shoulder and turned her to face the cave. Then he gave her a gentle push in that direction.

Thea picked her way back to the smuggler’s entrance, taking care not to slip on the smooth glass. Just as she reached it, a strong wind pushed her from behind.

She stumbled against the door. When she looked back, the beach was empty.

Paullus and Askanda stood huddled together just inside the gate. Askanda looked wide-eyed and close to fainting. Paullus didn’t look much better. Thea realized that the two of them clung to each other to keep from falling over.

“What was that?” Paullus whispered.

“His name is Inexsuperablis the . . . Terrible? Or the Mighty? I can’t quite remember which. I know him as Joshua.” She scratched her head. “I just figured out that he was a dragon, so I’m doing very well to remember the other name.”

“How?” Askanda warbled. That seemed to be the only word she could get out.

“That is a very long story.” Thea looked over to the stack of boats piled against the wall, and the books that they had told her they had buried there. “He’s not really here to help us, though. All he really wants is the books. We should retrieve them while he roots out the Korsridders. I’ll tell you the whole story while we wait for him to get back.”